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5:12am May 27, 2014

Interviews with self-advocates. Note that for some reason the Youtube captions on this one are kind of crappy compared to the usual ones on these videos.  Transcript below:

Hi my name is Shameka Andrews and I’m from Albany, New York.
“Now I understand that you are involved in the Miss Wheelchair America program and I was hoping you could tell us a little bit about that.”
Yeah um well in 2004 my service coordinator who helps me get services told me about this program called Miss Wheelchair program in our state our state program in New York program and told me it was all about public speaking.  And at that time I was going to school, and I had to take a lot of oral presentations and things like that which I hated.  And so she told me about this program and she’s like “Oh I think you should be a part of it, I think you’d be really great,” and I’m like “no no no”.  So after some talking to her a little bit and learning more about it, I decided to go for it.  
And basically what Miss Wheelchair is about, it’s a public speaking competition, it’s a program that promotes disability awareness and education, it’s not a beauty contest, not like Miss America.  And basically the competition has three parts:  There’s your one-on-one judging interviews, where they ask you questions to get to know you and what projects are important to you.  And then you have to give a two-minute speech on what your platform will be for the year.  And then you have to do an on stage interview where you’re asked two extemporaneous questions.  And then at the end of it, whoever has the most points, depending on their answers, gets to represent at their states for the national pageant.  
And I won the pageant the first year in 2004 I came in third in the state.  And I really the program I really give it credit for helping me be the advocate I am today.  Because the first year I ran and came in third, I was competing against two women who had been advocates for a very long time, and as I said I was still in school, had just graduated from college, and the other woman she had owned her own business and everything.  And I looked at these two women and thought what the heck am I doing here, how can I compete with them?  And now I can really say that when I ran again, in 2006 and actually won the title Miss Wheelchair New York and went on to Little Rock, Arkansas to represent New York in the national pageant and it was so great, meeting all these worn from around the world, advocating for their different causes just learning so much just like here at this conference, just learning from people, learning how they did it, learning from their experiences and being able to share my experiences.  
So now I help other people in our state program and promote the program, and just letting other girls know about it and increasing awareness.  And our ultimate goal is to have all fifty states have a Miss Wheelchair program and have it televised on TV like all the other pageants that you see.
“Cool that would be great.  Can you just talk a little bit about the importance of public speaking in self-advocacy?”
Well and speaking up for yourself in public speaking it’s just so important you know cuz nobody knows what you want better than you do, correct?  So you know they always say you’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t ask for it.  Part of my advocating for myself I grew up not with the mindset of if there was something I couldn’t do for myself and by myself then I shouldn’t do it.  And learning about being independent, learning the mindset of one of the biggest things for people with disabilities is being independent, a lot of people think that being independent means you have to do everything by yourself.  But I’ve learned that being independent also is saying to yourself that I don’t know everything and I can’t do everything and I need help.
“That is a great point thank you for sharing that.  Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about the program?”
Like I said if anybody out there wants to know more about the program they have a website where people can sign up and it’s MissWheelchairAmerica.org and our local New York program we set up a Facebook page and we’re on Facebook and so you can check us out there.